Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
A third type of periphrastic conjugation, which eventually developed into the perfect or pluperfect tenses in Romance languages such as Italian and French, is formed from the accusative perfect participle (ductum, ductam, ductōs etc., according to the gender and number of the object) combined with various tenses of habeō 'I have', for example ...
In Romanian, the pluperfect (mai mult ca perfect) is expressed without any auxiliary words, using a particular form of the verb, originated in the Latin pluperfect subjunctive [2] (compare Italian imperfect subjunctive Sembrava che Elsa non venisse with Romanian pluperfect Părea că Elsa nu venise).
The perfect subjunctive can also be used in a wish for the future, but this use is described as 'archaic'. [15] quod dī ōmen averterint! (Cicero) [20] 'but may the gods avert this omen!' The imperfect and pluperfect subjunctive are used in wishes to represent an imagined or wished for situation or event which is no longer capable of ...
The pluperfect subjunctive is used for an imagined event preceding the time of main verb in a historic context: velut sī prōlāpsus cecidisset, terram ōsculō contigit (Livy) [142] 'as if he had tripped and fallen, he touched the earth with a kiss' dēlēta est Ausonum gēns perinde ac sī internecīvō bellō certāsset (Livy) [143]
The ancient Romans themselves, beginning with Varro (1st century BC), originally divided their verbs into three conjugations (coniugationes verbis accidunt tres: prima, secunda, tertia "there are three different conjugations for verbs: the first, second, and third" (), 4th century AD), according to whether the ending of the 2nd person singular had an a, an e or an i in it. [2]
In the indicative mood there are seven tenses: present, imperfect, future, aorist (the equivalent of past simple), perfect, pluperfect, and future perfect. (The last two, especially the future perfect, are rarely used). In the subjunctive and imperative mood, however, there are only three tenses (present, aorist, and perfect).
In other sentences, the pluperfect subjunctive is a transformation of a future perfect indicative, put into historic sequence. The original words of the following sentence would presumably have been tū, sī aliter fēcerīs , iniūriam Caesarī faciēs 'if you do (will have done) otherwise, you will be doing Caesar a disservice':
In the following example, the tense of dīxisset is pluperfect subjunctive: id ubī dīxisset, hastam in fīnēs eōrum ēmittēbat (Livy) [153] "whenever he had said this, he used to throw a spear into their territory" This use of the subjunctive in temporal clauses of repeated action is generally not found before Livy. [154]